CHAPTER IV

THE SONG OF ALL THE AGES

"Now isn't life _extraordinary_?" thought Gwenna Williams, incoherently

in the drawing-room as she sat on the yellow Empire sofa under the

mirror, holding a tiny coffee-cup and answering the small-talk of kindly

Mrs. Smith. "Fancy, before this afternoon I'd never seen any flying! And

now on the very same evening I'm asked to go flying myself! Me! Just

like that girl who was with him in the race! (I wonder is she a great

friend of his.) I wonder when he'll take me? Will he come and settle

about it--oh, I do hope so!--before we all have to go away?"

But there was no chance of "settling" this for some time after the door

opened to a little commotion of bass laughter, a trail of cigar-scent,

and the entrance of the man.

Mrs. Rose-colour, with some coquettish remark that Gwenna didn't catch,

summoned the tall airman to the yellow-brocaded pouffe at her feet. Her

husband crossed over to Gwenna (who suddenly discovered that she hated

him) and began talking Welsh folk-songs. Whereupon Hugo Swayne, fondling

his Chopin curl, asked Leslie, who towered above him near the piano, if

she were going to sing.

"I'm in such a mood," he told her, "to listen to something rawly and

entirely modern!"

"You shall, then," agreed Miss Long, suddenly demure. "D'you know

the--er--_Skizzen Macabres_, those deliciously perverse little things of

Wedekind's? They've been quite well translated.... Righto, my dear"--in

answer to a nervous glance from her sister, "I'll only sing the

_primmer_ verses. The music is by that wonderful new Hungarian

person--er--Sjambok."

Her tall golden figure reflected itself in the ebony mirror of the piano

as Leslie, with a malicious gleam in the tail of her eye, sat down.

"I shan't sing for _him_, all the same," she thought. "I shall sing for

Taffy and that Air-boy. I bet I can hit on something that _they'll_ both

like.... Yes...."

And she struck the first chords of her accompaniment.

And what was it, this "crudely modern" song that Leslie had chosen for

the sake of the two youngest people present at that party?

There is a quintette of banjo-players and harpists who are sometimes

"on" at the Coliseum in London, but who are more often touring our

Colonies from Capetown to Salter, Sask. And wherever they may go, it

seems, they bring down the house with that same song. For, to the hearts

of exiled and homesick and middle-aged toilers that simple tune means

England, Home and Beauty still. They waltzed to it, long ago in the

Nineteenth Century. They "turned over" for some pretty girl who

"practised" it. So, when they hear it, they encore it still, with a lump

in their throats....

It was the last verse of this song that drifted in Leslie's deep

contralto, across this more enlightened drawing-room audience of

Nineteen-fourteen. Softly the crooning, simply phrased melody stole out:

"_Even to-day we hear Love's song of yore!

Low in our hearts it rings for evermore.

Footsteps may falter, weary grow the way,

Still we can hear it at the close of day!_"

--"and it's at least as pleasant as any of their beastly 'artistic'

music," thought Leslie, rebelliously, as she sang:

"_Still to the end_," (chord) "_while Life's dim shadows fall,

Love will be found the sweetest song of all_!"

She ended in a ripple of arpeggios, triumphantly, for she had glanced at

the two youngest people in the room. Little Gwenna's eyes were full of

the facile tears of her race; and the Dampier boy's face was grave with

enjoyment. Alas, for the musical taste of these two! They _had_ liked

the old song....

The enlightened others were puzzled for a moment. _What_ was that

thing----?

Mr. Swayne explained languidly. "Priceless old ditty entitled 'Love's

Old Sweet Song.' A favourite of the dear late Queen's, long before any

of US were thought of. Miss Long has been trying to pull our legs with

it!"

"Oh, Leslie, dear, you are so amusing always," said Mrs. Rose-colour,

turning with her little superior smile to the singer. "But won't you

sing something _really_?"

Leslie's quick black eyes caught a glance of half-conscious,

half-inarticulate sympathy that was passing between the youngest girl in

the room and the man who had taken her in to dinner. It was as if they'd

said, together, "I wish she'd sing again. I wish she'd sing something

like _that_ again...."

They were alone in their wish!

For now Mrs. Smith sat down and played something. Something very

long....

And still what Gwenna longed to happen did not happen. In spite of that

glance of sympathy just now, it did not happen.

The Airman, sitting there on that brocaded _pouffe_, his long legs

stretched out over the soft putty-coloured carpet, did _not_ come up to

her to speak again of that so miraculously proffered flight in his

aeroplane. He went on being talked to by Mrs. Rose-colour.

And when that pretty lady and her husband rose to go, the young girl in

her corner had a very blank and tense moment. For she heard those people

offer to take Mr. Dampier with them and drop him at his rooms. Oh, that

would mean that she, Gwenna, wouldn't have another word with him! He'd

go! And his invitation had been unanswered!

"Care to go up?" he'd said--and Gwenna hadn't even had time to tell him

"Yes!"

Ah, it would have been too good to be true!----

Very likely he'd forgotten what he'd said at, dinner....

He hadn't meant it....

He'd thought she'd meant "No."

He was going now----

But no. To her unspeakable relief she heard his deep "Thanks awfully,

but I'm going on with Hugo presently. Taking him to meet some people at

the Aero Club."

Now, just imagine that! thought the country girl. Here it was already

half-past ten at night; but he was going on to meet some more people

somewhere else. This wonderful party, which had marked an epoch in her

life, was nothing to him; it was just the beginning of the evening. And,

after days in the skies, all his evenings were like this! Hadn't Mrs.

Smith said when he came in, "We know you are besieged with invitations?"

Oh, the inconceivably interesting life that was his! Why, why was Gwenna

nothing but a girl, a creature who, even nowadays, had to stay within

the circumscribed limits where she was put, who could not see or be or

do _anything_, really! Might as well be born a _tortoise_....

Here the voice of Mr. Hugo Swayne (to which she'd paid scant attention

so far) said something about taking Miss Long and her friend up to

Hampstead first, and that Paul could come along.

Gwenna, enraptured, discovered that this meant in his, Mr. Swayne's,

car. The four of them were to motor up to her and Leslie's Club

together. All that lovely long drive?

But though "lovely," that journey back to Hampstead, speeding through

the broad, uncrowded streets that the lights showed smooth and polished

as a ballroom floor, with the giant shadows of plane-tree leaves

a-dance upon the pavement--that journey was unbelievably, relentlessly

short.

Mr. Swayne seemed to tear along! He was driving, with Leslie, gay and

talkative and teasing, beside him in front. The younger girl sat behind

with his cousin. The Airman was hatless; and he wore a light loose

overcoat of which the big sleeve brushed the black satin of Gwenna's

wrap.

"Warm enough?" he asked, gently, and (as carefully as if she'd been some

old invalid, she thought) he tucked a rug about her. Eagerly Gwenna

longed for him to return to that absorbing question he'd put to her at

the dinner-table. But there seemed scarcely time to say a single word

before, with a jarring of brakes, the car drew up in the slanting road

before the big square block of the Club. The arc-lights blazed into the

depths of the tall chestnut-trees beside the street, while the four

young people stood for a moment clustered together on the asphalt walk

before the glass-porch.

"All over now," thought Gwenna with quite a ridiculously sharp little

pang as good-nights and good-byes were said.

Oh! Wasn't he going to say anything else? About the flying? _She_

couldn't!

He was holding her hand (for good-night) while Mr. Swayne still laughed

with Leslie.

"Look here," the Airman said abruptly. "About that flying----"

"Yes! Oh, yes!" Gwenna returned in a breathless little flurry. There

mustn't be any _mistake_ about what she wished. She looked up into his

holding eyes once more, and said quiveringly, "I would so love it!"

"You would. Right," he said, and seemed to have forgotten that they had

shaken hands, and that he had not yet loosed her fingers from his large

and hearty grip. He shook hands again. "Then I'll come round And fix it

up----"

And the next instant, it seemed, he was whirled away from her again,

this Stranger who had dropped into the middle of her life as it were

from the skies which were his hunting-ground. There was the noise of a

retreating car droning down the hill (not unlike the receding drone of a

biplane in full flight), then the grating of a key in the lock of the

Club door....

Gwenna sighed. Then she went upstairs, humming softly, without knowing

what the tune was, Leslie's song:

"_Once in the dear, dead days beyond recall----_"

Leslie followed her into her room where she turned up the gas.

"I'll undo you, Taffy, shall I?... Enjoyed yourself rather, after all,

didn't you?" said the elder girl, adding quickly, "What's the matter?"

For Gwenna before the glass stood with a dismayed look upon her face.

Her hand was up to her round white throat, touching the dimpled hollow

where there had rested--where there rested no longer--that

mother-of-pearl pendant.

"It's gone," she exclaimed ruefully.

"What has, child? What have you dropped?"

Gwenna, still with her hand at her throat, explained, "I've lost my

heart".